Several senators have formed a caucus to promote online freedom in Iran, China and other countries as the Obama administration pushes for greater access to an unfettered Internet. Ted Kaufman, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sam Brownback, a Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, will co-chair the Senate Global Internet Freedom Caucus, a Kaufman aide said.
In a joint study with Sperling's BestPlaces, Symantec has come up with a list of the 50 riskiest places in America to be online. At the top of the list are some of the country's major tech hubs, including Seattle, San Francisco and Boston.
Google is working on a browser plug-in that allows consumers to block being counted when landing on a Web site that monitors visits with Google Analytics. The Mountain View, Calif. company's engineers continue to test and finalize the function.
Congress has a cybersecurity problem that ranges from foreign governments stealing information off BlackBerrys to unwitting aides e-mailing sensitive information from their secure office computers to more-vulnerable terminals at home. Government computers are attacked an average of 1.8 billion times a month, according to recent remarks by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer.
In most states, teenagers who send or receive sexually explicit photographs by cellphone or computer — known as “sexting” — have risked felony child pornography charges and being listed on a sex offender registry for decades to come. But there is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook.
China's state media accused Google of pushing a political agenda by "groundlessly accusing the Chinese government" of supporting hacker attacks and by trying to export its own culture, values and ideas. In a commentary signed by three Xinhua writers, the state news agency also sought to defend the government's Internet censorship, which Google has cited as one reason the world's largest search engine may quit China.
The iPad is expected to be a target for credit-card thieves and online scammers of all types. Antivirus software company McAfee is already warning consumers not to fall for e-mails or ads promising a free or reduced-price iPad if they enter an address -- and a credit card number.
At a time when the Obama administration is pressing for harsher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, democracy advocates in Iran have been celebrating the recent decision by the United States to lift sanctions on various online services, which they say only helped Tehran to suppress the opposition. But it is still a long way from the activists’ goal of lifting all restrictions on trade in Internet services, which opposition leaders say is vital to maintaining the open communications that have underpinned the protests that erupted last summer after the disputed presidential election.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has suspended work on parts of its huge computer overhaul, dealing the agency the latest costly setback in a decade-long effort to develop a modernized information system to combat crime and terrorism. The overhaul was supposed to be completed this fall, but now will not be done until next year at the earliest.
VirnetX announced that it has launched another lawsuit against Microsoft, this time claiming that the same patent violations found in Windows XP and Vista from the first suit also exist in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Earlier, a Texas jury ruled against Microsoft in a patent infringement case initiated by VirnetX in 2007. VirnetX, which develops software to secure instant messaging and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) communications, alleged that Microsoft had violated two of its patents concerning virtual private network (VPN) technology.
Three civil suits have been filed against Yelp in the last month, accusing the company of extorting businesses to advertise. For example, Boris Levitt, the owner of a San Francisco furniture-restoration company, alleges in a complaint in California Superior Court that Yelp retaliates against businesses that don't choose to advertise by negatively skewing their ratings and reviews on the site.
A Manhattan federal judge barred the financial news service Theflyonthewall.com from issuing immediate news about analyst research from several Wall Street banks, often before recommendations are shared with clients. Ruling in favor of Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit, Barclays Plc and Morgan Stanley, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said Theflyonthewall.com engaged in "systematic misappropriation," essentially getting a "free ride" from its quick publication of upgrades and downgrades that can move stocks higher and lower.
Less than a year before Viacom filed a $1 billion copyright claim against Google and YouTube, the parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures was interested in acquiring the video-sharing site, according to claims made by Google in court documents. "We believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks / Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online, globally," according to a internal Viacom slide that Google filed with the court.
Canon announced it intends to be the first company to say goodbye to .com and buy its own top-level domain, taking advantage of ICANN’s decision to broadly widen the number of top-level names. If successful, the global electronics giant, perhaps best known for its digital SLR cameras, will open the .canon global Top Level Domain, or TLD, as soon as late 2011.
After reviewing objections, a San Jose federal judge has approved a $9.5-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over social networking site Facebook's Beacon program that published what users were buying. Facebook denied any wrongdoing but agreed to end the Beacon program last November.
Facebook is considering installing a "panic button" on its site to allow users to report suspected pedophiles, it has confirmed. In a meeting with the British home secretary, at which "frank views" were exchanged, the social networking site also defended its current reporting system.
Two weeks after Apple filed suit against HTC for patent infringement, HTC said that it disagrees with Apple and intends to "fully defend itself." "HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible," Peter Chou, chief executive at HTC, said in a statement posted to the company's Web site.
The brokers for sex.com announced that the domain name auction has been postponed (though eager individuals can put in an early bid online). At a starting price of $1,000,000, it’s easy to see why — it’s hard to think of an adult company comfortable enough with its recession-hit pocketbooks to go for it.
Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge of the discussions. The hardball approach comes less than two months after Amazon shocked the publishing world by removing the “buy” buttons from its site for thousands of printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, in a dispute over e-book pricing.
Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook's estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information. The e-mails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.
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